Amin Elhassan Calls Out Woj for Putting His Foot On Black Careers at ESPN

Amin Elhassan and Jemele Hill joined The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Tuesday. The three former ESPN personalities (along with the other inhabitants of the pirate ship) discussed the Rachel Nichols story that has dominated the sports media conversation for the past few days. Elhassan specifically shared some very strong opinions on the goings-ons at ESPN.

Elhassan took a very pointed shot at Adrian Wojnarowski because of the quote attributed to Woj in the New York Times story where he called Nichols a "bad teammate."

Here is the clip, which starts at the 41:02 mark.

“Are you [beeping] sh-tting me? This guy is going to call someone a bad teammate? For real? For real? Do we want to talk about the black careers that he put a foot on because he was threatened by? Do we want to talk about that? Do you wanna talk about the newsbreakers - with an ’S’ - of diverse background, who have rapports with players that Adrian doesn’t have. That he saw as threatening because his sources are all front office people… and assistant coaches trying to move up… and maybe a video coordinator that’s trying to get a better job somewhere else.

"But he can’t talk to LeBron. And he can’t talk to Chris Paul or Damian Lillard or some of these other guys. He doesn’t have that rapport with them. So what he does is he steps on them. And beyond that particular angle, he steps on a lot of people over there. He steps on a lot of people over there. Right? When you see a byline that says 'as reported by Adrian Wojnarowski and fill-in-the-blank.' That’s the old, 'yeah, put my name on it and put it out there.'"

The show also discussed Nichols' privacy concerns, which Le Batard pointed out, have been completely ignored since the "gotcha" moment hit the NYT. During that part of the discussion Elhassan also questioned whose fault it was that Nichols was in the position to be recorded. Here's his response to Hill asking if he was asserting something nefarious took place with what the NYT article termed "new technology."

“You’re god damn right I am."

"Bullsh-t. Bullsh-t. Rachel knows how to use it. It’s the TVU app. We’ve all used it before the pandemic on remotes. They give you a little iPhone. Now it’s an iPad, but they used to give you and iPhone and a tripod and you hook it up and you use it."

The entire interview was heavy on nuance and worth a listen to get the full picture on a story involving several complex issues.